This is a blog detailing the creation/evolution/ID controversy and assorted palaeontological news. I will post news here with running commentary.

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Pew Poll: Views on Evolution Driven By Religion More Than Education?

Sarah Pulliam Bailey writes for the Salt Lake Tribune and suggests that, buried in the Pew poll on evolution, religious affiliation is a much greater predictor of evolution acceptance than education. She writes:

While education matters, the new analysis suggests that religion appears to have more influence than level of education on evolution. The 21-point difference between college graduates and high school graduates who believe in evolution, for example, is less stark than the 49-point difference between mainline Protestants and evangelicals.

Evangelicals are four times as likely to reject human evolution as mainline Protestants, with 64 percent of evangelicals saying that "humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." Half of black Protestants say humans have not evolved, compared to 15 percent of white mainline Protestants who share the same opinion.

Those with more years of formal education are more likely than those with less education to say that humans and animals have evolved over time. Seventy-two percent of college graduates say humans have evolved over time, compared with 51 percent of high school graduates who say the same thing.

The problem with this analysis, of course, is that there is no one-to-one correlation. How many of the mainline protestants are college graduates? How many of the evangelicals? Unless you can isolate those patterns, you cannot say for sure if this is an accurate analysis.